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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Tea Tea

Spiced Tea

CampDoll Diaries is jet setting Around the World this week, so I thought it would
be a perfect time to add some tea information. We have been neglecting part of
our blog’s namesake as of late.

A
popular drink right now is what people in the USA are calling Chai Tea. In fact they are saying “tea
tea” because “chai” is the word for tea…but I don’t explain this very well. It
would be best for you to take a look at my friend Anupy’s, Indian as Apple Pie,
blog post on this topic. She share some great information and memories and two recipes.

The March/April issue of TeaTime magazine also had an article about Masala Chai and provided the following recipe:

4 whole cloves

2 pods cardamom

1 stick cinnamon, broken into pieces

3 cups water

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon fresh grond black pepper

½ cup milk

3 tablespoons sugar or hony

2 tablespoons (4 teabags) Assam black tea

Combine spices in a mortar and crush. Transfer spices to saucepan and add the water. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat, cover, and let steep for 5 minutes.

Add milk an sugar and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Add tea, cover, and let steep for 5 minutes.

Stir and pour through strainer into a warm teapot or teacups.

HOWEVER,
We Used Anupy's First Recipe

Lanie
is here to help me make an attempt at Anupy’s Masala Chai with what we have on
hand. (That means stooping to using some dried, ground spices. Unfortuntaely,
we could not get better at this time…we’ll try again later and report the
differences.) Experts and purists, please forgive us in our experiment.

Lanie has gathered
the ingredients (our substitutions appear in parentheses.)

Anupy’s Masala Chai

1 1/2 cups water

1 black tea bag

3 small green cardamom
(1/8 teaspoon of ground cardamom)

3 whole cloves

pinch of fennel seed

1 small piece cinnamon
stick

1 teaspoon grated
ginger (1/4 teaspoon ground ginger)

Milk (1%)

1/2 teaspoon honey

We set the burner to
high and prepared the spices while waiting for it to boil.

We made our own tea bag
with Assam Black loose tea and added it to the boiling water.

Then we crushed the
spices together, made a spice bag, and added it to the boiling water.

We watched it turn
brown then dark brown.

Then we added the milk and allowed that
to come to a boil. Then scooped out the tea bag, removed it from the heat,
covered it and let is set for 3 minutes.

Here Lanie is waiting for the final
boil. Since she was getting impatient she decided to look elsewhere in the
kitchen. “The saying goes, ‘A watched pot never boils.’” and added the honey
to the cup.

At
last the final boil! We poured into the cup. “Smells good.” Lanie said.

“Tastes
good too. You try it.”

Hmmm,
it’s a little bland (that’s what we get for not using whole, fresh spices), but
not horrible. Still 100 times better than the stuff at Wawa and Starbucks.